Many different social networking applications currently existent that allow users thereof to generate content that can be viewable by others. An exemplary social networking application allows users to post messages that are made available to all other users of the social networking application that are contacts of such user. Additionally, the user can cause certain content generated by the user be placed in a public feed such that it is available to the general public by way of a search application.
Another exemplary social networking application is a message broadcasting application (which can also be referred to as a micro-blogging application), wherein a user of the broadcasting application can generate content that is automatically broadcast to others that subscribe to broadcasts of the user. Once a subscriber receives broadcast content, she can rebroadcast the content. Many users have also chosen to utilize blogs to make available content generated by such users. Thus, it can be ascertained that there are currently a myriad of mechanisms that can be employed to publish content generated by users.
Due to the ease that a user can publish content, people are currently utilizing social networking applications to distribute substantive content such as breaking news stories. For example, a user at a scene of an accident can capture the accident in an image by way of a mobile telephone, generate text that describes the accident, and post the image and text by way of a social networking application such that the content becomes available to others (e.g., the general public).
A user wishing to search over messages generated by these social networking applications, however, may be unable to ascertain whether such messages are credible. Users currently assess credibility of messages based upon trust relationships with authors whose messages they elect to follow. However, consuming these messages by way of searching for a topic rather than following an author is becoming increasingly prevalent with the introduction of search tools that are configured to search over this type of content. It can be ascertained that increased reliance on messages generated by way of social networking applications makes determining credibility of these messages a non-trivial concern.